Recently, lipases have become of interest as laundry detergent additives. By way of illustration, Novo Industri A/S has recently introduced into the marketplace a lipase referred to as LIPOLASE. However, the present inventor has found that LIPOLASE is not as effective as might be desired in performing its function of breaking down lipids into fatty acids, and the LIPOLASE stability is less than might be desired in laundry detergent formulations. Thus, other lipase compositions exhibiting enhanced cleaning efficacy and/or lipase stability are highly desired by the detergent manufacturing community.
The present inventors have previously isolated a biologically pure culture of a previously undescribed strain of Pseudomonas alcaligenes, strain SD2, ATCC 53877 as disclosed and claimed in co-pending, commonly-assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 07/324,062 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,063,160, issued Nov. 5, 1991, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, and published on Sep. 20, 1990 as International Publication No. WO 90/10695. The organism is a natural isolate and has been deposited on Mar. 2, 1989 with the American Type Culture Collection at Rockville, Md. (ATCC), having been assigned the accession number ATCC 53877. This novel strain SD2 was found to produce a novel lipase. However, heretofore the yields of the lipase, and its ease of separation from the culture medium, have been less than might be desired.
New processes for providing enhanced yield and simplified isolation of lipase and other hydrophobic enzymes produced by microorganisms, such as Pseudomonas alcaligenes strain SD2, from a culture medium would be highly desired by the detergent manufacturing industry. Heretofore, such methodology has not been known to the knowledge of the present inventor.